She decided to do it illegally. First she tried with the help of a cousin who promised to sneak her in safely, but he turned out to be a crook. He never showed up where they agreed to meet, so Silvia had to hire someone else, called a “wolf,” to help her across the border, which is how the very poorest and most desperate Mexicans do it.
The crossing itself took almost two weeks. During that time, there was almost no food or water. Even going to the bathroom was a big ordeal because everyone had to stay hidden in the back of a truck all the time. It was the first time Silvia had been in close quarters with “peasants,” as she called them, which I guess meant Mexican people even poorer than her. She said that the peasants kept to themselves, except when they were on her case about being a snob. The part about her being called a snob amazed me. Who ever heard of a Mexican snob?
Finally, it was time to cross the river. It had been raining for several days, and the river was swollen. Silvia’s wolf had told everyone to stay put, because the river was too dangerous to cross, but Silvia was getting suspicious, because every day they waited, the people in her group got a little weaker. The wolf was starting to pay too much attention to her. He had already demanded to spend the night with two of the peasant girls. No one could stop him. He threatened to kill anyone who didn’t do what he said, but no one really believed him. It was simpler than that. They just couldn’t afford to turn back.
One night, the wolf went to buy liquor. That night was going to be Silvia’s turn with him. She told the others it was now or never. Half the group wanted to stay, but the rest were for going, including the two peasant girls the wolf had already raped. The ones who wanted to go, went. Silvia led the way.
They crossed at night. The river wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the wolf had said. At least that’s what Silvia thought at first. But when they counted heads on the other side, they discovered that one of the peasant girls was missing. Her father said it was probably a blessing, since she had been ruined by the wolf anyway. You can imagine what the other ruined girl felt on hearing that. Silvia sort of adopted her from then on because her family was starting to turn its back on her. “You met that girl,” Silvia said. “Rosaria. From the hotel.”
Things didn’t get much easier once they were on the U.S. side, because then they were spotted by the border patrol, which chased them with guns and motorcycles. Some of the Mexicans got caught and sent back, so all their suffering was for nothing. Silvia got away, but she was alone now. It took three more days for her to find a church that would help her and not tell the authorities. Eventually, she made her way up north through an underground railroad, and wound up at my grandparents’ house. She was grateful to them—even now—but she still hadn’t earned a single dollar to send back to her family.
We sat for a while not speaking, just listening to the trains, which sounded like suitcases being dragged down the halls of a cheap motel.
I told Silvia I thought she was extremely brave. I told her she should never, ever be a maid again, although I secretly doubted it was possible. After that, I had to move because my legs were giving me pins and needles, and when I transferred Silvia’s head from my lap to a little newspaper pillow, I saw that she was sound asleep. She probably hadn’t heard a word I said.
Chapter Eighteen
The jolt came just before morning. I was expecting a big clanking collision, because that’s what it sounded like from the outside when they rammed train cars together. But this was extra gentle, as if they knew that Silvia was snoring away and really needed her sleep. There was a nudge up at the front of the train, and then the distant metallic kiss of the cars hooking up. My sleepy mind interpreted it as a kiss on the cheeks, as if everything was finally beginning to come together, and not just the train.
I woke Silvia up. It wasn’t easy. She was curled up tight, her arms wrapped around her belly, as if the night had turned her into a mothering ball. While she was still groggy, I put my hand on her belly and felt the baby kicking. She was very happy when I told her we were almost on our way. She stretched out like a cat and said she wouldn’t mind staying in bed all day. I told her I thought that was a good plan.
After ten minutes, though, we still hadn’t felt an encouraging lurch, or even the powerful grumble of the engine being started. After half an hour, Silvia asked me if we were going soon.
“Do I look like a train schedule?” I asked.
“Chica, I have to pee.” It surprised me to hear her call me “Chica.” I guess I was getting used to “Finn.”
“Well, you can’t just pee in the corner,” I said.
“And I agree with you,” Silvia said.
“But it’s light outside. People can see.”
“Let them. It’s a natural function.”
“I mean the police,” I said, which shut her up.
Then I noticed something. There was a sort of sliding hatch in the corner of the boxcar, near the floor, about the size and shape of a pet door.
“Come here and give me a hand,” I said. The two of us managed to slide the hatch up along its wooden tracks. I half expected a dog to come trotting in.
The hatch opened onto a black stone wall. No one would be able to see what we were doing.
“Welcome to the ladies’ room,” I said.
“And the men’s room,” Silvia said.
The sliding door didn’t stay up by itself, so I had to hold it there while Silvia went through the ordeal of gathering up her skirt, pulling down her underwear, and squatting—all of it very slowly, like an old person. I waited for her to do her business.
“I can’t,” Silvia said, after a while.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I’m nervous.”
“Well, get over it,” I said. But she couldn’t. Her legs started shaking. “Out of the way,” I said. “It’s my turn.” I didn’t have any trouble with the arrangement. I wasn’t nervous in the least.
Suddenly a man outside shouted, “What the hell?”
Silvia dropped the sliding hatch, which was a good move, except my ankles got splashed.
“Did I just pee on someone?” I asked.
“I think, yes,” Silvia said.
“We should have looked.”
“I did look. He wasn’t there before.”
We heard an angry voice, and then there was a knock on the boxcar door. It wasn’t just a straightforward “knock-knock-knock,” either. It was a mixture of knuckle taps and scratching. It certainly didn’t sound like a policeman’s knock.
I opened the door a crack. A young toothless man with long red greasy hair in a ponytail was wringing out his socks.
“You call this civilized?” he said, holding up the socks accusingly. “Gimme some water.”
“Sorry,” I said. “We’re all out.”
The toothless man spat. He was muttering about people who peed on you and then didn’t even have the courtesy to share their water. I couldn’t help staring at his turned-in, old man lips. His mouth looked ancient compared to the rest of him, which was wiry and sunburnt and strong. He was wearing a cheap plastic poncho, the kind that folds up into a tiny envelope.
“This isn’t a barnyard, where animals go around urinating on each other,” he said. I’d never heard of a barnyard where animals did that, but I said, “Sorry, we didn’t know. I’m Finn. And this is Silvia.”
“Business first. Then the niceties,” he said, forcing the door open a little wider. I tried to stop it from sliding, but he was very strong. He grimaced as he forced it open, his gray gums widening, as if the sliding door was somehow connected to his jaw. Then he sprang up into the boxcar, crouching for a few seconds after he landed. “You can close the door now,” he said. I didn’t, even though it was probably a good idea.
He went over to the sliding hatch and kicked it. “So that’s the culprit,” he said.
“We didn’t know anyone was under there,” I said.
“You just assumed. And then you went ahead and did y
our nasty duty. Like a beast in the field,” he said. He was getting distracted by Silvia. She avoided looking him in the eye, but he stood over her, eyeing her belly as if it was the main course in a buffet. “Hello there, Silvia,” he said. I couldn’t believe I had used her real name. It was so stupid!
“Here’s five dollars for some water,” I said, pulling a bill out of my pocket. Doing that dislodged a wad of bills—all the change from the Mini-Mart—which tumbled down to the boxcar floor.
“So you’re a man of means,” he said, accepting the five dollars from me with a stiff bow. He watched me very closely as I gathered up the bills.
“Okay then,” I said. “I guess that’s it.”
“Clark Clarkson,” he announced, extending his hand, as if I had asked his name. “I’m traveling with my protégé, the rubber boy James. You’ll want to meet him.” Clark tightened his lips over his gray gums, rolled his tongue, and whistled. Then he shouted, “Yo, James!”
A little black boy appeared, pausing to rest his elbows on the floor before wiggling himself into the boxcar. He looked perfectly normal in terms of arms and legs, but he moved around on his belly, rolling his torso in waves, like a dolphin. His arms were crossed behind his back. He kept them out of the way as he arched his body over to Clark. He spat on Clark’s shoes and proceeded to polish them with his shoulder.
“James is new to the world of street entertainment. I’m showing him the ropes.”
James stopped polishing and did another trick. He balanced on his belly, lifting his calves and craning his neck backwards until the soles of his bare feet were resting on the back of his head. He had thick calluses like a ballet dancer. I wondered if he owned a pair of shoes.
“Now he’s just showing off for you,” Clark said. “James is still intoxicated with his power over an audience, and has yet to learn about timing—which, in our business, is paramount.” Clark delivered a soft kick to James’s legs. There wasn’t much force to it—just enough to ruin his balance. James unraveled onto the floor and said, “Whatever.”
Clark stuck out his tongue at James. “Ham,” he said.
“Shouldn’t you two be. . . entertaining?” I asked.
Clark scoffed at that. “There’s no money in mornings,” he said. “James and I are evening players.” Clark yawned. He didn’t bother to cover his gaping choppers with his hand. In fact, he emphasized the yawn with a little rhythmic sigh—“Yuh yuh yuh.” He seemed to like watching our reactions to the sight of his disturbing mouth. Especially Silvia’s. “We’re coming off one of those endless nights,” he said. Then he stretched himself out near Silvia’s feet, ordered James to find breakfast, and fell asleep on the spot. I thought he was faking it, but then his mouth hung open and he started to snore.
“I don’t think he’s asleep,” Silvia whispered. James overheard her. He wiggled over to the snoring Clark, sat up—his hands always behind his back, as if they were glued there—and then, with his bare toes, picked up a fat dust bunny and tickled Clark’s nose with it. Clark’s eyelids twitched, but he kept on snoring.
“He was right about one thing,” I told Silvia. “We need food and water.”
“But what if the train goes and you’re not back?” It was a good question, but I could tell she was less worried about that than being alone with Clark.
“Then I’ll meet you in California,” I said.
James stood up on his legs, like a normal boy, and said, “They blow a whistle when they get ready to go. We’ll hear it.” There was something quietly reassuring about him. Silvia gave me a haughty look, as if James had just put me in my place.
James led me across the train yard as if it was his personal playground. He knew all the secret ways. We crawled through culvert pipes and under ledges. We kept close to the trains, duck-walking underneath them whenever we could. Under the commuter trains, I worried that someone would flush a toilet on my head, but James said that was dumb.
There were plenty of workers in the yard. Sometimes we got very close to them, but they never saw us. It was like James and I were on a safari, hunting the most dangerous game—railroad workers!—and getting as close as we could without disturbing the beast in his native habitat. It was kind of sad, too, because some of those workers looked pretty friendly. I was surprised by my appetite for normal conversation. Even so, I knew it wouldn’t have been conversation with those men, just an alarmed, “Hey you!” before the inevitable chase.
James led us to an open manhole cover.
“Rungs is slippery, watch out,” he said. His body slid down the hole like water. I followed him. It took me longer because I wasn’t made out of rubber like James, plus there was my wrist.
Then we were in the basement of the train station, which was a real labyrinth, like in the Greek myths, the kind that kept you on the lookout for monster droppings and made you wish you had a big ball of string. I could have spent the rest of my life trying to figure out that maze of identical dripping concrete tunnels, but James was a very confident guide. We only had to backtrack once, and I learned later that it hadn’t been a wrong turn at all. He just knew an electrical closet where they kept boxes of nice fat chalk, which he said helped him in his work on sidewalks. He gave me a demonstration, rubbing some chalk on his callused palms and holding them out for me. “Gymnasts use it, too,” he said defensively, as if using chalk was a sign of weakness.
James led us to a door with a radiation symbol and the words “Fallout Shelter.” So that’s what the tunnels were. I felt sorry for anyone who went down there in the event of a nuclear war. Better to be vaporized.
There were metal stairs, which James said led up to the main floor. He said “main floor” the way an elevator man would, almost singing it, with the high note on “floor.” I had never ridden in an elevator with an elevator man, but my grandparents talked about it constantly. The extinction of elevator men was, in their opinion, a big symbol of the downfall of civilization. It tells you something about the world they grew up in. Their idea of civilization was forcing a poor black man in an insulting round cap to ride up and down all day in an airless elevator, just so white people could have the pleasure of saying, “Seven,” or “Three,” or, “Lobby, please,” and watching the man’s immaculate white glove push the buttons.
I started to feel guilty for thinking of James as an elevator man. I overcompensated. “Good job finding the stairs,” I said enthusiastically. It was an idiotic thing to say, like congratulating an Indian for knowing where the river was. I could tell James resented it.
We climbed the metal stairs in silence, the long climb made more lonely by the clanging of our feet, which echoed against the concrete walls. The stairway smelled like cooked food and mildew, the way emergency stairs in public buildings often do, but even that nauseating smell made my stomach growl. We went through two doors marked “Keep closed at all times,” down a short hallway lined with dented metal office furniture, and there we were, at the edge of the station’s famous dome room, craning our necks and gawking like tourists.
It was strange to come into the station that way, after crawling around in the fallout shelter and taking the emergency stairs. Everything seemed fake: the polished marble floors and the gilded statues of kneeling men holding up the world—even the hundreds and hundreds of business people using their cell phones, reading newspapers, and trying not to spill coffee on their fancy clothes. But the phoniness somehow made the place even more impressive, as if the station and everyone in it had been polished and scrubbed and dressed up just for James and me, to show savages like us the power of wealth so that we would immediately start to feel disgusted with ourselves.
It worked, too. I dusted off my shirt. James ran his fingers over his shaven head as if he were combing it, leaving four pale furrows in the stubble.
My first impulse was to lie down on one of the long curved oak benches, slide along the cool wood, and let the cricket song of expensive leather shoes lull me back to sleep. I turned around to ask James if he
had ever slept in the station, but he was gone. I was on my own, at least for a while, which suited me fine.
My feet automatically moved me to the center of the station, directly under the famous dome, as if the floor was tilted towards a drain. It was oddly hushed there. When I was really little, my grandfather had tried to explain it to me, something about acoustics and domes. Standing at the center of the room, he said, was like putting on an enormous helmet which let you watch everything in silence. For some reason, I thought about God when he said that, which was exceedingly unlike me. Thinking back, it was my closest call with religion.
A sudden whiff of cinnamon rolls emptied my head. There was a pastry cart nearby, with big wooden wheels and a hooped tent over it. It was supposed to look like a covered wagon from the Old West, but what pioneer wagon ever had a boom box, or took credit cards? A dopey high school girl in a beret was waiting on people. There was a long line. She was incredibly slow because she stopped working every three seconds to put on a despicable “Aren’t I adorable?” face. Her smile was like an applause sign. The worst part of it was that the men in line seemed to think she really was adorable. They made sure to point out the absurdly large tips they stuffed into her jar.
In spite of all that, I couldn’t resist the cinnamon smell. It reached right into my stomach. Everywhere I walked seemed to lead me back to the pastry wagon. In the end, I waited in line and put up with Ms. Adorable. I ordered two pastries, one for me and one for Silvia. They cost three dollars each, and they looked much better than they tasted, but as soon as I finished mine, I scarfed Silvia’s, too. I told myself that she wouldn’t have liked it anyway, that it was too rich. I considered buying another one, but the beret girl, thinking I was a boy, had done a flirty thing with her eyes when I paid her. It made me want to run back down to the fallout shelter.
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